


Desert Sunset, Sapphire Afterglow

by dance_across



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Fluff, Foot Fetish, Kneeling, M/M, Massages, Masturbation, Moving In Together, Nail Polish, POV Victor, Pedicures, Post-Canon, Submissive Victor, Victor's Foot Thing, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 16:43:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13574676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_across/pseuds/dance_across
Summary: “Do you still paint your nails at all?” Yuuri asks.“Yeah,” Victor says—and it’s a moment before he realizes this is a lie. He stillintendsto paint his nails. He still thinks of himself as the sort of person who paints his nails. But he hasn’t actually done it in years.





	Desert Sunset, Sapphire Afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [airspaniel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/airspaniel/pseuds/airspaniel) for the beta and the pedicure tips! Any pedicure-related mistakes, intentional or not, are my own.

The clean slide of a box sliding from a shelf. The soft pop of a plastic lid being removed. Victor holds his breath, waiting.

“Ooh,” says Yuuri.

Smiling to himself, Victor glances up at the clock on the wall. Twenty-three minutes since the last time Yuuri said _Ooh_. For them, this week, this is practically a record.

It was only supposed to take two days, tops, for Victor to go through all the stuff he’d boxed away. He would get rid of whatever could be gotten rid of, thereby making room for all the new boxes that would arrive on his doorstep as soon as Yuuri’s parents got around to sending them.

Victor isn’t, and hasn’t really ever been, sentimental about the trappings of his life. He gets rid of old clothes on a regular basis; he pares down his collection of books with ease whenever they start overflowing from his shelves; it’s rare that he keeps merchandise from his sponsors past the length of his contracts.

Old costumes? Medals from his junior days? Newspaper clippings and articles torn from magazines? Well, that’s what his storage unit is for.

But there are things that have crept through the cracks, accumulating so slowly that Victor hardly noticed. Photographs, CDs, notebooks. Things that don’t take up much space individually, but collectively end up occupying boxes upon boxes. A large box at the bottom of his coat closet. Two smaller ones on the highest shelf of the same. Little trinket-sized boxes under his bed and at the top of his pantry and at the back of his linen closet, all just out of sight but undeniably present—a constant reminder, for years, that his neat and spare and orderly life wasn’t all that it appeared to be.

Now, though, Yuuri is here, and there needs to be space. And so Victor gave himself two days, along with a plan to finish early and impress Yuuri with his ruthless ability to pull extra storage space out of thin air. Two days out of their precious week off, before they begin training again in earnest.

But then Yuuri insisted on helping. And now, here they are, on day four out of seven. They are nowhere near being finished.

“What is it?” Victor asks.

Last time, twenty-three minutes ago, it was a thin photo album, containing Polaroids of Victor and Chris, out on the town, probably six or seven years ago. (Victor still has no idea how Chris managed to get his hands on an actual bonafide Polaroid camera.) The time before that, it was an unlabeled CD that turned out to contain several demos of the art song that would eventually become “Stammi Vicino.” (Yuuri almost cried when Victor suggested the CD be thrown away.) Yesterday, it was a notepad full of half-formed ideas for programs that Victor never finished; the day before that, a scrapbook that a fan had once made for him.

Now, all Yuuri says is: “Pink.”

“Hmm?” says Victor.

“There’s so much—is it _all_ pink?”

Victor turns around, and finds Yuuri kneeling on the carpet before an open box. In two open hands, he holds five—no, six bottles of nail polish.

_Magenta, Rose, Blush, Salmon, Strawberry, Flamingo,_ Victor thinks, as his eyes rove over the bottles. Some of these names correspond with the names on the bottles. Some don’t. Some, he liked well enough to nickname.

“Not all,” he says, after a second. “There’s some black in there, too. Probably toward the bottom. And a purple, I think? Some red…”

Yuuri’s already digging through the box. There are a lot, a _lot,_ of bottles in there. “Mostly pink, though,” he says. “Ah-ha. Here’s a black one.”

He holds up a square bottle with a shiny label, and Victor thinks, _Midnight._

“I remember the black,” Yuuri says, smiling fondly at Midnight. “Your junior programs, right? You always had black nail polish.”

Victor nods, shoving his own box (more notebooks, more CDs) to the side. “When I moved to seniors, I was told in no uncertain terms that black nail polish made me look like a whiny teenager, and I was to stop wearing it immediately.”

“So you stopped?” Yuuri says. “Just like that?”

“I stopped wearing it on my fingernails, at least.” Victor gives him a little eyebrow-waggle. “Nobody thought to look at my toes.”

Yuuri’s eyes move downward, to where Victor has crossed his legs on the carpet—to where Victor’s toes are peeking out from beneath his knees. Victor shivers at the weight of Yuuri’s gaze. Usually, when people look at his feet, there are skates on them. Everybody sees black leather and gold blades, not the plain skin hidden underneath.

Everybody but Yuuri.

“I painted them black for a little while after that,” Victor goes on, even though he didn’t really intend to; why does Yuuri looking at him always have that effect on him? “And I got away with pink on my fingernails for a while, because, you know, it’s close enough to my real skin color that it sort of blends. But then one person notices, and suddenly everyone’s looking for it, and Yakov tried to get me to stop, because… something about masculinity? I don’t know. Except then I started getting endorsement offers, and…” He cuts himself off with a shrug. “Yeah.”

“So what are these, free samples?” Yuuri asks.

“Some, yeah,” Victor says. “I didn’t keep all of them, though. These are just the ones I liked enough to use on my own.” For some reason, it’s important that Yuuri knows this about him: that Victor has his own tastes, that he doesn’t just own things because they are given to him.

There’s something in Yuuri’s answering smile that says he understands. “Do you have a favorite?”

“Probably the Flamingo one,” Victor says, just before remembering that that’s not its real name. He scoots over toward Yuuri and pulls the box closer. It doesn’t take long to find the bottle that Yuuri was holding only a moment ago. He picks it up and offers it to Yuuri for inspection. Its label reads _Desert Sunset._

“Flamingo?” Yuuri says, as he reads the label too.

Victor shrugs. “I used to rename them.”

Yuuri doesn’t point out, as he unscrews the cap and inspects the blob of color that clings to the tiny brush, that the pale pink polish doesn’t look like either a desert sunset or a flamingo. Victor doesn’t know what it _does_ look like, but it isn’t either of those things.

“Do you still paint your nails at all?” Yuuri asks.

“Yeah,” Victor says—and it’s a moment before he realizes this is a lie. He still _intends_ to paint his nails. He still thinks of himself as the sort of person who paints his nails. But he hasn’t actually done it in years. There is a layer of dust, unmarked by fingerprints until Yuuri’s just now, on that box’s lid.

“Well,” he amends, “not really.”

“Why not?” Yuuri asks.

This gives him pause. Why not, indeed?

“I guess, for my fingernails, it was probably around when I cut my hair?” Victor says. “Yeah, around then. I looked older all of a sudden, and less feminine than before, and my sponsorship deals started getting more…”

“More about vodka and cars, less about nail polish and makeup?” Yuuri supplies, because of course he does. Sometimes Victor suspects that Yuuri remembers more details about Victor’s career than Victor does himself.

_“Manly_ things,” Victor says, rolling his eyes. “And, I mean, it’s fine. It was just an image thing, it didn’t mean…”

He doesn’t quite know what it didn’t mean. He’s never gotten around to figuring out what it _did_ mean. Oh, he knew what it meant for his image. He’s always been in careful control of that, insofar as he was able to be. But what it meant for him _self,_ well, that’s a different story.

Yuuri purses his lips, thinking quietly for a moment. Then: “So you cut your hair and changed your image and started getting different kinds of sponsorships, and you stopped painting your fingernails.”

“Stopped painting them _as often,”_ Victor says, because, once again, it’s somehow important that Yuuri understands the difference.

“As often,” Yuuri says, as his gaze slides slowly downwards again. “Okay. Well, what about your toes?”

“I…”

Victor frowns. When _was_ the last time he painted his toenails? He can’t actually remember. Not that that’s Yuuri’s question. Yuuri’s question isn’t _when;_ it’s _why_. And, the thing is, Victor does know the answer to that one.

It’s because nobody ever saw his toenails—well, except his doctors, who didn’t count because they didn’t care about prettiness, only functionality. Nobody ever saw, and nobody ever cared, so it was a thing that Victor did only for himself. A few minutes of time that he gave to himself: time to relax, time to lose himself in the details of soaking and clipping and filing and painting, time to not worry about what anyone else thought of him.

He doesn’t remember noticing when it grew harder to take that time. He doesn’t remember there being one specific day when, faced with the choice between prettying up his feet and just sitting quietly with Makkachin for an hour, he decided for the first time to choose the latter.

He doesn’t remember when each individual step of his pedicure routine started seeming like an impassable mountain.

And he doesn’t, he absolutely does not, know how to explain any of this to Yuuri.

So he opts instead for an explanation that’s… well, more or less true. If you squint.

“Guess I got lazy,” is what he says.

“Lazy,” Yuuri echoes softly… and Victor knows that he knows. But he doesn’t say anything, and neither does Yuuri. Yuuri just lets the word sit there, sort of true but mostly not, as he bends forward and reaches for Victor’s foot. He touches one shy finger to the tip of Victor’s big toe, and then slides it over the nail. And that’s when he says, “I could paint them for you now? If you want?”

“I… we…” Victor swallows against the feeling, huge and unnamable, that’s begun to balloon in his chest. “Boxes. We have so many boxes left, and—”

“And only three more days before we go back to training full-time and, you know, being exhausted all the time,” Yuuri says. He holds up the bottle of Flamingo. “Probably too exhausted for stuff like this.” He unscrews the cap again. “Come on, let me. Give me your feet.”

Whatever feeling Victor was starting to have is _gone,_ replaced by complete horror at what Yuuri is suggesting. “What, _now?”_ he finds himself saying. “Just polish, without any of the prep?”

“Prep…?” Yuuri looks completely confused.

“Preparation!” Victor says. “Soaking your feet, trimming your nails. You need a base coat, for heaven’s sake, and—”

And Yuuri has started laughing at him.

“What?” Victor demands.

“You have a _process,”_ Yuuri says, between bouts of laughter. God, he’s adorable when he laughs. However—

“Obviously I have a process,” Victor says. “Everyone has a process. There is, objectively, a process for painting one’s nails.”

“Or,” Yuuri says, as he starts to calm down. “You can just give me your feet, let me put some polish on your nails, and then we’re done in three minutes.”

“Three minutes.” Victor sighs. “Three minutes. Oh, Yuuri.”

“That’s how Yuuko and I used to do it,” Yuuri adds with a shrug. “Ours always looked fine.”

Victor’s head snaps up. It’s so rare that Yuuri drops little nuggets of childhood information like this, ripe for picking up and examining further—and Victor can never, ever resist. Ever.

“You and Yuuko?” he says hungrily. “Tell me everything.”

A faint blush spreads across Yuuri’s cheeks. “Everything? I mean, there’s not really much to tell. We started painting our nails black when we saw you doing it, and we kept doing it until her mom made her stop.”

“Her mom?” Victor says. “Not yours?”

Yuuri ducks his head a little. “My mom didn’t mind.”

Victor nods. This makes sense. Yuuri’s mom, he has long suspected, is kind of the coolest.

“Anyway,” Yuuri continues, “we’d paint each other’s nails, and we’d compete to see who could be done first. She would win.” He grins, then, kind of shy but also kind of evil. “But only if we didn’t take points off for mistakes.”

“Ohh, and you have to take points off for mistakes,” Victor says. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Exactly,” Yuuri says, his eyes glinting. “So, technically, I won every time.”

Victor can’t help it; he rises to his knees, takes Yuuri’s face in his hands, and kisses him soundly. “Mm!” Yuuri says, surprised. And then, as he relaxes into the kiss, as he opens his mouth, as he lets Victor inside: “Mmmm.”

The sound rumbles straight from Yuuri’s body into Victor’s, and suddenly Victor doesn’t care about the boxes at all. Or about the two-day deadline that they’ve already missed. Or anything at all, except…

“A nail-painting contest,” he murmurs, when they finally break apart.

Yuuri’s gaze is dark, and his smile takes on the competitive edge that rarely happens off the ice. His voice is low and sultry as he replies, “Is that what you want? To see who can finish first?”

The innuendo, accompanied by a quirk of Yuuri’s eyebrow, is impossible to miss. But Victor pretends to miss it anyway.

“Nope!” he says sunnily, sitting back on his heels. “I want to see who can do it _better._ You paint my nails your way—and then I get to do yours. _My_ way.”

Yuuri grins. “You know what? Yes. Let’s do this.”

So Victor sticks out his feet, and Yuuri goes diligently to work.

But for the light sounds of Makkachin snoring on the couch out in the living room, the apartment is quiet. Yuuri knits his brows together in concentration as he strokes the tiny brush, heavy with pink paint, up the nail of Victor’s big toe. His movements are precise, his strokes even. The result looks surprisingly good. Still, when Yuuri is finished, he lifts Victor’s left foot, inspects the single nail that he’s painted so far, and blows out a sigh.

“Do you have a chair you could sit in?” Yuuri asks. “Or maybe we could move into the bedroom? The angle is weird here.”

The bedroom _would_ be more comfortable than the hallway next to the linen closet. Victor stands up, careful not to smudge Yuuri’s work, and into the bedroom they go.

Yuuri positions Victor on the edge of the bed, and himself at Victor’s feet, and but for the look of intense concentration on Yuuri’s face, Victor would be getting some very specific and very lewd ideas about where this could go next…

Who is he kidding? The ideas are already there, swimming happily around inside Victor’s brain. Yuuri’s Intense Concentration face is only making it worse.

Yuuri picks up Victor’s left foot and nestles it in his lap, and Victor thinks, _I am going to marry him._ Every thought after that is aimed at not getting hard.

It’s difficult, though, when Yuuri’s touching his skin with such intensity, such precision. When Yuuri’s telling him to bend his foot just so, when Yuuri holds his arch in place as he swipes the brush along one toenail, then another, then another…

Eventually, Yuuri is done. Eventually, he looks up at Victor’s face, and Victor must look as turned-on as he feels, because Yuuri’s eyebrows shoot up and his face goes pink again, and—

And that’s it. That’s the color. It doesn’t look like a flamingo, and it doesn’t look like a desert sunset, but sure as hell looks exactly like the shade of pink that just bloomed in Yuuri’s cheeks.

Victor, in that instant, renames his favorite nail polish. Now, its name is Yuuri.

“You okay?” Yuuri asks softly. “Victor?”

“Hot water,” Victor says, the words tumbling out in a rush. “To soak your feet in. Usually I’d just use a mixing bowl, but we can fill the bathtub if you—”

“Hold on,” Yuuri says. “Sit down.”

Which is when Victor realizes he’s gotten to his feet. He sits back down.

“They’re not dry yet,” explains Yuuri. “You can’t mess them up before then. That’d be cheating.”

Victor curses himself for an amateur. He should’ve known better.

“Well, if you feel like drying them _for_ me,” he says, trying to sound calmer than he feels, “my hair dryer’s in the bathroom. And there’s a plug next to the nightstand.”

And so Yuuri dries Victor’s toenails with a hairdryer. Only once he pronounces them finished does he allow Victor to stand up and move around.

“What do you think?” he asks, trailing Victor to the bathroom.

Victor twists the taps—first hot, then cold—and adjusts them until water of the perfect temperature flows into the bathtub. He plugs the drain and says, “I think you did a beautiful job.” He grins. “For an amateur.”

Yuuri glares at him. “Then bring it on, Mister Professional.”

So Victor does. Once the tub is a few inches full, he instructs Yuuri to sit on the edge and put his feet in to soak. The next step is to wait for about ten minutes, which is usually boring—and so Victor decides to make it _not_ boring. He threads his fingers through Yuuri’s hair and begins to massage his scalp. And then his neck. And then his shoulders.

“Mmm,” Yuuri says, tipping his head, resting it against Victor’s belly. His lashes are dark against the still-flushed skin of his cheeks. “I didn’t know nail-painting came with a free massage.”

“Well, now you know,” Victor says.

Yuuri opens his eyes, then, and looks up. Victor is keenly aware of Yuuri’s soft hair against his belly, with only a thin shirt in the way. He is also aware that there is a better way to do this: with a full tub, with Yuuri’s back against his chest and his own back against the edge of the tub. There could be bubbles, maybe. There could be massages just like this, and Yuuri tipping his head back, just like this, and Victor’s hands wandering lower, and Yuuri allowing it, and…

And he has to stop that train of thought _right now._ He’s already half hard, and he’s nowhere near finished with Yuuri’s pedicure.

Willing his thoughts back in order, Victor pats Yuuri’s back, right between his shoulderblades. “Time to dry off. I’ll get you a towel.”

He does, and as Yuuri dries his feet, Victor rummages through the medicine cabinet for the things he’ll need. Clippers. A file. A small jar of lotion. The cuticle thing whose name he doesn’t know. He holds them up for Yuuri to see, and then says, “Ready?”

Wide-eyed, Yuuri nods.

“Bring the towel,” Victor says, and wets a washcloth before heading back into the bedroom.

While Victor will never deny that it was a singular experience, having Yuuri kneeling at his feet like that, he definitely prefers it the other way around. This is not new information—far, far from it—but positioning Yuuri at the edge of the bed still sends a little thrill curling through Victor’s gut. A thrill that does _not_ go away as he sits cross-legged at Yuuri’s feet, spreads the towel over his lap, and takes Yuuri’s right foot in his hands.

“Afraid you’ll spill polish everywhere?” Yuuri says, a jab that’s halfhearted at best.

Victor plays along, though. “In your dreams. Anyway, we’re not even close to the polish stage yet.”

And with that, he begins trimming and filing and buffing with an ease that surprises him. It’s been a long time since he last did this, but the muscle memory is there, and his eye for detail is as good as ever. Better, even—because now, instead of being stuck with his own feet, he gets to care for Yuuri’s.

One nail finished. Then two, three, four. Then five: a whole foot. Carefully, Victor wipes down Yuuri’s right foot with the wet cloth, and then… and then, he can’t help himself. He lifts it and presses his mouth to the arch. He lingers there only a moment, smelling clean skin, feeling the subtle movement of muscles and tendons beneath—but it’s long enough for Yuuri’s breath to hitch in a way that, by now, is unmistakable.

Sure enough, when Victor looks up again, Yuuri’s face has turned an even deeper shade of that lovely pink color, and there is a small bulge in his lap that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago.

“You like that?” Victor asks, running his thumb along the underside of Yuuri’s toes. They curl at the touch, which thrills Victor.

“It’s… it’s a weird thing to like, right?” Yuuri says.

Victor isn’t actually sure if it’s weird or not. Depends on who’s deciding, most likely. Chris would definitely not think it was weird. Georgi wouldn’t either, although probably for very different reasons.

So, does he, Victor, think it’s weird? He skims his thumb again over Yuuri’s curled toes, feeling the bump of each knuckle, the newly-buffed smoothness of each nail. How talented these feet are. How competent and capable. How utterly worthy of being stroked and kissed and cared for.

Finally, Victor replies, “I don’t think it’s weird.”

A noise escapes from Yuuri’s throat, sort of strangled and almost word-like, but not quite. He presses his lips firmly together and does not reply.

Victor smiles.

Setting Yuuri’s right foot down on the floor, he takes the left into his hands and starts the process over again. He trims. He files. He buffs. He goes slowly and steadily, and this time he pays very close attention to Yuuri’s breathing, which has started to come faster, and to Yuuri’s lap, which Victor absolutely does not touch. Not yet.

When the right foot is finished, Victor wipes it down and looks up at Yuuri, who says, “The next part. Do the… do what you did before? Please?”

His voice is shaking, and Victor doesn’t even have to look up to know how red Yuuri’s face is. It’s hard for Yuuri to ask for what he wants, sometimes. But he’s getting better at it.

Victor lifts Yuuri’s foot and presses a kiss to the arch, a mirror image of what he did just a few minutes ago. This time, though, he doesn’t stop there. His lips trail kisses over Yuuri’s skin, back toward the heel, and then forward again—and then, before even consciously deciding to do so, he’s closing his mouth over Yuuri’s big toe.

This is not something he’s ever done before. Or ever felt the impulse to do. But Yuuri lets out a high, breathy sound, and Victor moves his tongue, and Yuuri whispers something that might be Victor’s name, and it’s exactly right.

He closes his eyes and lingers there, just a moment longer, before he lets go. Gently, he wipes Yuuri’s toe down again with the towel, and sets his foot on the floor.

Then, he opens his jar of lotion, which smells faintly of roses. He rubs it into the skin of Yuuri’s feet, into all the places his mouth just touched, and Yuuri—Yuuri groans.

It’s not a new sound, nor even a surprising one. Victor has massaged Yuuri’s feet before, in the onsen or after a long day of practice, and Yuuri nearly always groans at the release of tension it brings. But in this context, it sounds more… _well._

Finally, he lets go.

“Ready for some polish?” he asks softly.

Yuuri nods. He doesn’t seem capable of speech anymore. Not that Victor can blame him; he would honestly be perfectly happy to abandon the pedicure, rip Yuuri’s clothes off, and put his mouth on as much of Yuuri’s skin as Yuuri will allow. Anything to make Yuuri keep looking at him like that.

But Yuuri is waiting. Yuuri wants paint on his toenails. And Victor… Victor wants paint on Yuuri’s toenails, too. He wants to give Yuuri the same time and care that he used to give to himself. He wants to remember, after all this time, what it feels like.

“Do you want pink, too?” Victor asks. “Or shall I find you something different?”

“You, um.” Yuuri swallows. “You choose.”

That’s good, because Victor already has something in mind. Something that will suit Yuuri far better than light pink ever would. He stands—but before he can move, Yuuri’s hand darts out, boldly brushing the front of Victor’s sweatpants. Victor, who has been half hard for at least fifteen minutes now, sucks in a breath at the sudden contact.

Yuuri smiles up at him. “You liked it, too.” His eyes glint with mischief. “Weirdo.”

“Hush,” Victor says with a laugh. “I have a contest to win.”

And then, before Yuuri can touch him again and destroy his self-restraint _completely,_ he flees the room. Back to the hallway near the linen closet. Back to their abandoned boxes and the bottles of polish that somehow got strewn all over the floor. Eight pink ones and one black one: none of them the one he wants. He gathers them, sets them aside, and peers into the box that Yuuri found.

Here is a bottle of polish that’s almost the exact color of the insides of Yuuri’s ears. Here, a bottle the color of Yuuri’s lips, right after he’s eaten something spicy. Here, a bottle the color of his eyelids when he cries. Here— _ah-ha._ Base coat. Top coat. And then, soon afterwards, the color he’s looking for:

The label reads _Sapphire Afterglow._ Victor’s name for it was Velvet. Inside the bottle, dark blue paint shimmers. It is a secretive color—a color for a person with well-hidden reserves of passion that almost nobody is allowed to see. Victor goes back into the bedroom, the bottles clutched in his hand.

“How about—”

The rest of his question dies in his throat, because there, on the bed, is Yuuri. He’s sitting in exactly the same place, in exactly the same position, except that now (Victor reminds himself to breathe), he is naked. Practice pants, T-shirt, underwear… they’ve all vanished.

Yuuri’s feet are on the floor, toes pressed into the towel that Victor left behind. One of Yuuri’s hands is resting on the bedspread. The other is curled loosely around his cock.

Jaw suddenly slack, Victor watches as Yuuri’s thumb worries at his foreskin, pulling it lazily back and forth across the still-hidden head… back and forth… back and forth…

Then, Yuuri’s voice, cutting through it all:

“Don’t you have a contest to win?”

“I… uh…”

“Did you find me a nice color?” Yuuri asks next, and his voice is so mild, and his hand is still playing with his half-hard cock, touching and teasing and—

“Cheater,” Victor finally manages to say.

“It’s not cheating,” Yuuri says innocently. “You could still win.”

He extends his left leg, pointing his foot like he’s in a ballet class—and, just, the _lines_ of him, that muscular thigh, that sinuously curved calf…

Victor swallows. His own dick is growing heavy between his legs. There is probably a visible tent in his sweatpants, but he can’t look away from Yuuri long enough to see for sure.

Still playing idly with himself, Yuuri smiles up at him, wiggling the toes of his pointed foot.

Victor is going to marry this man.

But first, he is going to win this contest.

Victor takes a very deep breath, then lets it out again, then goes and sits down exactly where he was before. At Yuuri’s feet. Legs crossed. He arranges the towel over his lap again, and settles Yuuri’s left foot upon it, right in the middle.

“Base coat first,” he says. “Point your toes a little? Good. And stop moving.”

“My feet aren’t moving,” says Yuuri, reasonably. “Only my hand.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s only Victor’s imagination that makes it seem as though the motion of Yuuri’s hand is echoed in every other part of his body—that gentle back-and-forth sway, trying to entice Victor into its rhythm. But still:

“Your hand is very distracting.”

“Is it?” Yuuri looks down at his right hand, planted innocently on the bed. His left is still moving, moving, moving.

Victor rolls his eyes. “Insufferable,” he says, and begins to apply the base coat.

It takes a moment or two, but he actually does manage to focus on the task at hand—to find his own rhythm. He paints one foot, and then the other, and then dries it with the hair dryer that Yuuri left on the floor nearby. Then he settles in to apply the color.

“Ohh,” Yuuri says, as the first streak of Sapphire Afterglow appears on his big toe. “I like it.”

“Thought you might,” says Victor, and keeps painting. “Although, Yuuri, you really do need to stop moving.”

Because, this time, it’s definitely not Victor’s imagination. Yuuri’s hand is still moving, and its effects are beginning to spread outwards. Victor can feel Yuuri’s toes against the palm of his hand, trying not to curl in on themselves. And while normally Victor would love to feel Yuuri’s toes curling as he pleasures himself—

“Yuuri!”

Yuuri stops. The flush on his face has spread to his neck. His cock is almost fully erect in his hand, and fluid has begun to bead at the tip. But somehow he manages to look gloriously, gorgeously, imperiously irritated when he says, in return, _“Yes,_ Victor?”

Victor could keep trying to order Yuuri to stop touching himself. But he has a feeling that wouldn’t get him very far. Victor may be stubborn, but Yuuri is… well, Yuuri is very, _very_ stubborn.

So he tries a different tactic. Softening his features, Victor smiles up at Yuuri through his lashes. “If you stop touching yourself until I’m finished, you can use my mouth instead.”

“Obviously I can,” Yuuri says sweetly. “I can use your mouth whenever I want. Now keep painting.”

Something surges, deep inside of Victor… but it’s not at all the something that he might have expected, hearing that. Normally, when Yuuri decides that he wants to play like this—taking charge, ordering Victor around, reminding him who he belongs to, that sort of thing—Victor complies instantly. Instinctively. Like there’s a part of himself always lurking just below the surface if his skin, waiting for Yuuri to call it forth.

Tonight, though.

Tonight, Yuuri’s _now keep painting_ doesn’t soothe. It stings.

“I…” Victor stops the sentence almost as soon as it starts. He sits back, his grip on Yuuri’s foot loosening, and he tries again: “Can you—can we—I don’t want to…”

Yuuri’s imperious expression evaporates like so much smoke, leaving in its wake an expression of raw worry. “Oh, Victor, no, I’m so sorry, did I—”

“No, no,” Victor says quickly. “It’s not you. You’re perfect, you’re—you _know_ I love it when you give me orders, I just—it’s just…”

Tension emanates from Yuuri as he waits for Victor to finish.

“Just not tonight,” Victor finally says.

Yuuri nods stiffly. His eyebrows are drawn together. “I’m sorry.”

Victor leans forward, bending his neck so that forehead presses against Yuuri’s shin. And then changing the angle, so it’s the entire left side of his face. Yuuri’s skin is cool against him, and he absolutely means it when he says, “Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then, um, what is it?” Long gone is the cool confidence of before. Yuuri’s voice is tremulous, now. Unsure. One of his hands lands softly on the back of Victor’s head, lightly stroking his hair. “You don’t have to tell me. I mean, not if you don’t want to.”

Victor angles his neck again, so he can press a kiss to Yuuri’s leg before he straightens back up. He looks at Yuuri’s dear, beautiful face, then down at his feet. Nine toenails, clear and glossy with base coat. One toenail, perfectly painted in blue. He thinks of his younger self, and tries again to remember the last time he did all of this.

He thinks, _Now keep painting._

“I wanted to give you something,” he says, holding up the little bottle of Sapphire Afterglow that’s still clutched in his hand. “And… and it’s not the same? If you just, you know, _take_ it? If we do it that way, it’s not a gift anymore.”

Yuuri’s eyes go wide. “Oh. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay.” Victor huffs a laugh and adds, “Neither did I, I think. But can we just…?”

“Yeah,” says Yuuri, nodding in quick, jerky movements. “Let me just put my clothes on—”

“Don’t you _dare,”_ Victor says, clutching at Yuuri’s legs as he begins to stand up.

“…Are you sure?”

A pang echoes in Victor’s chest as he takes in Yuuri’s expression. He’s hesitant. No. More than that; he’s _embarrassed._ He is tense and nervous where, just a moment ago, he was gloriously confident; his cock has softened again, and lies small in his lap.

Victor hates so much that he was the one to make these things happen. He needs to fix this immediately.

“Please,” he says softly, and runs his hands up Yuuri’s calves to his knees, to his thighs. “I just want…”

He trails off. He wants so many things. He want to care for Yuuri’s feet. He wants to wrap his lips around Yuuri’s cock and suck until he’s hard again, until he comes. He wants to hear Yuuri say his name, after. He wants Yuuri to stroke his hair and tell him—

He doesn’t know what he wants Yuuri to tell him.

“You want to paint the rest of my nails blue?” Yuuri’s voice is gentle, this time. Worlds away from the _now keep painting_ of before.

“To start with,” Victor says. “Yeah.”

And so Yuuri extends his foot again, and Victor goes to work. He paints in delicate, precise strokes. He memorizes the shape of each nail bed. He notices that the fourth toe of Yuuri’s right foot doesn’t exactly match the one on the left. He wonders if Yuuri broke one of them. He figures it’s likely, and doesn’t ask.

“I really do like the color,” Yuuri says, as Victor puts the final stroke on the final toe.

“Me, too,” Victor says. “And it goes on thick enough that you won’t need another coat. Just the top coat, when it dries.”

Yuuri laughs. “Should’ve known. How long will that take?”

“Long enough,” Victor says, and puts his hands between Yuuri’s legs. Pushes his thighs apart. Rearranges himself so that he’s kneeling instead of sitting, and kisses the inside of Yuuri’s left knee.

“Victor, what are you—”

“Be careful not to smudge the polish,” Victor murmurs, and kisses Yuuri’s skin again. He trails a line of soft kisses up, and up, until Yuuri’s skin becomes warmer, until he can’t move any further. Yuuri smells like clean sweat and a hint of musk. His cock is less than an inch from Victor’s face. Victor looks up, meeting Yuuri’s eyes, and says, “May I?”

“Please.” The word is high-pitched, almost breathless. “Please.”

Yuuri’s cock stirs as soon as Victor takes it into his mouth. Holding it steady with one hand, Victor tastes every inch of flesh, finds the head with his tongue, laps the wetness away. He feels Yuuri grow and swell, hears the little _oh, oh_ sounds that begin to color the edges of his breathing. He sucks, and he licks, and he pulls off so that he can press his mouth to the base, right at the place where the taut, velvety skin of his cock gives way to the looser flesh of his balls.

He kisses Yuuri there. He breathes in and smells desperation and arousal. It won’t take much to push Yuuri over the edge.

And so Victor draws back. Far enough that he can see the blown pupils of Yuuri’s eyes—and far enough that Yuuri can see him smile as he says, “That’s probably enough time. Now for the top coat.”

“Top coat,” Yuuri repeats, dazed. “I…”

“You could keep touching yourself, if you wanted,” offered Victor. “The movement’s not—This part doesn’t have to be as precise.”

Yuuri’s hand moves, seemingly of its own accord, but stops just short of touching his cock. It pulls back again, and Yuuri says, “I’ll save it for you. If you, um. If you don’t mind.”

“I’d love that,” Victor says, and starts applying the last layer of polish to Yuuri’s toes.

He paints and paints, interrupting himself to glance up every few seconds, just to make sure Yuuri can still feel the echoes of Victor’s mouth on him. Sure enough, Yuuri has pressed the side of his thumb against the base of his cock, as if to keep himself in check. As if, without it, he might lose control altogether.

Victor smiles and continues his work.

By the third time he looks up, Yuuri has started whimpering. His eyes are closed, his neck a long, enticing curve. His throat moves as he swallows. His lips part, and he is painfully beautiful.

Victor keeps painting. And when he finally finishes, he considers making Yuuri wait again, the same as he did last time. He also considers fetching the hair dryer, like he did the first time. But in the end, he settles for lifting Yuuri’s feet, one a time, and pursing his lips, and using his own breath to dry the paint.

He remembers, for the first time in a long time, being young—maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen—and wishing someone would do this for him. He remembers how oddly lonely the hair dryer felt, after all that wishing.

He remembers, and he sets Yuuri’s feet gently down, and he looks up and says, “All done.”

Yuuri is staring at him. His eyes are shining, and for one ridiculous moment Victor is certain, absolutely certain, that Yuuri saw that memory of his, just as plainly as he saw it himself.

“Victor,” Yuuri whispers.

“Yuuri,” Victor says, and smiles.

“Come back up here?” Yuuri says.

Victor does; he rises up onto his knees, bends over, and reaches—

“No,” says Yuuri. “I mean—”

He uses both hands to take Victor’s face and tilt it upwards, away from his cock, toward where he is already leaning down.

The kiss is warm, deep, welcoming. One of Victor’s hands comes to rest, somehow, on Yuuri’s waist. One of Yuuri’s finds its way into Victor’s hair, and he thrills at the weight of it. It’s everything he wanted.

Almost everything.

Which is why, when the kiss ends and they come apart again, Victor says, “Can I ask you to do something for me?”

“Mmhmm,” Yuuri says. “What is it?”

Victor breathes deeply. “Say my name.”

“Victor.”

“I mean when you come,” he says. “When I make you come, will you…”

Yuuri smiles. “Victor, Victor, Victor.”

Victor licks his lips. Shakes his head. Corrects, softly: “Vitya.”

“Vitya,” Yuuri repeats. His accent gives it new layers, uncovers new depths. It makes Victor shiver. “Is that what you prefer to be called?”

It’s not a preference, really. Just a thing that happened, and keeps happening. To the press, to his fans, to his competitors, he is Victor. To his rinkmates and his coach and his friends, he is, and has always been, Vitya.

“By the people closest to me,” he says. “And you’re the closest of all. So it only seems right.”

“Vitya,” Yuuri says, testing it out, and Victor feels his heart crack. “Vit-yaaa,” Yuuri says again, and he feels flayed open.

“Yeah,” he manages to say. “Like that.”

“Like that.” Yuuri smiles, his fingers still soft in Victor’s hair. “You should make me come now, so I can say it the way you want.”

Something inside Victor goes quiet and settled. This is exactly right. Not Yuuri giving orders and making demands—not today, anyway—but Yuuri giving suggestions. Making requests.

Yuuri, here in his home, wearing his nail polish, making requests.

Victor leans up and presses another quick kiss to Yuuri’s lips. “You live here now,” he says. “You _live_ with me.”

Yuuri laughs, quiet and kind. “Yeah. I do.”

And Victor bends his neck and wraps his lips, once again, around Yuuri’s cock. The head is soft, rounded, and full under Victor’s tongue. The shaft is solid and fat under Victor’s hand. He squeezes and strokes, and he licks, he sucks. Soon, he can feel movement under Yuuri’s skin, quickening—

“I’m about to—Vitya, Vitya, I’m gonna—”

The words pool, molten hot, in Victor’s belly. He sucks harder, harder.

And then, two hands in his hair, clutching, pulling.

And then, “Ah, ahh, Vitya, _Vitya,”_ as Yuuri floods his mouth. “Vitya,” Yuuri says, over and over, breathlessly, as Victor swallows it all.

He keeps his mouth on Yuuri for as long as he is allowed, feeling the convulsions begin to slow, feeling Yuuri’s cock begin to soften. Finally, though, Yuuri nudges him away, saying shakily, “Too much.”

Victor sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He keeps his hands on Yuuri’s knees, though, as Yuuri slowly comes back to himself. His breathing slows. His eyes are closed, but eventually he opens then again.

“That was amazing,” he says.

Victor smiles. “For me, too.”

A slight frown creases Yuuri’s brow, and his gaze dips downward. “Oh, did you already…?”

“Not yet,” Victor says. His own arousal is still waiting quietly, patiently—a spark that hasn’t yet been fanned into a flame.

The frown disappears, eclipsed by eagerness. Yuuri asks, “How do you want it?”

Victor considers the question; the answer is slippery and elusive. So he says, “You choose.”

Yuuri blinks. For a moment, he is quiet. Then, hesitantly, he begins: “Can I…”

Victor waits for the rest of it, a _yes_ already on the tip of his tongue.

Yuuri swallows. “Can I, um… can I watch you? I want to see how you, um…” The sentence fades away into shyness, and for a moment, the yes catches behind Victor’s teeth.

It’s not like he’s never been asked this before—he has, many times—but it was always with a very particular subtext. _Can I watch you get yourself off?_ he’d be asked, and just underneath it, an unspoken _You’re a performer. Perform for me._

This is nothing like that. This is his Yuuri, asking to know another part of him.

“Yes,” he finally says. “Yes, of course.” His hands find the waistband of his sweatpants. “On the bed, or—”

“No, um.” Yuuri stops him with one hand, reaching out, almost touching his chest. “Stay there. If you don’t mind.”

Stay here, kneeling on the floor at Yuuri’s feet. Victor’s head feels light. He manages to say, as he lifts his hips just enough to slide his pants down to his thighs, “I don’t mind.”

Victor’s cock, exposed to the air for the first time since they started this, is almost fully erect by now. His underwear is damp with his arousal; he’ll probably have to change after. But for now, all he cares about is the smile spreading slowly across Yuuri’s face.

“Touch yourself,” Yuuri whispers, confidence slowing creeping into his voice. “Let me see.”

So Victor does. Cupping his balls with one hand to hold himself steady, he wraps the other hand around his dick—and after so much patient waiting, the contact is sudden enough that he shivers.

“Oh, perfect,” Yuuri says. “Oh, look at you.”

Victor begins, slowly, to stroke himself.

“Look at you, Vitya…”

A whimper escapes him, and his grip tightens, and his eyes flutter shut without his permission. He keeps stroking, and Yuuri keeps speaking, and for a few exquisite moments Victor just floats, buoyed by sensation and the sound of Yuuri’s voice. _So good,_ and _Yeah, right there,_ and _Go on, just like that._ And then:

“Open your eyes,” Yuuri says. “Look at me.”

It’s difficult, but Victor obeys—and there’s Yuuri, earnest and rapt, watching him as he strokes, faster and faster, as he shivers, as he whimpers. Flames begin to grow in his belly. He’s so close. And Yuuri, watching him, certainly isn’t going to slow him down any.

“I’m,” he tries to say. His voice is breathy and weak, and it quickly becomes apparent that sentences aren’t entirely possible right now. “I…”

“I know,” Yuuri says, leaning forward, touching one palm to Victor’s cheek. The contact is searing hot, and Victor presses into it, angling his face down, chasing Yuuri’s hand as he starts to pull away.

“Yuuri,” he says, as the hand moves out of his reach.

“Eyes up here,” Yuuri says, and there’s an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. “Look at me. Don’t stop looking at me. I want you to see me watching you while you come.”

And that’s all it takes. Victor cries out, wordless, and spills all over himself. He tries to catch some of it with his other hand, but it’s already too late. Most of it’s on his shirt, and the lower part of his belly, and his thighs. He doesn’t care, though, because Yuuri said _don’t stop looking at me,_ and Victor didn’t. He still hasn’t. He’s still looking, still seeing Yuuri’s face, pink with pleasure, as he watches.

“Beautiful, Vitya,” Yuuri says softly, and this time there are _two_ hands on his face: one on each cheek. The touch grounds him, and he breathes into it. He doesn’t close his eyes until Yuuri leans down and kisses him. And then, when he breaks it off, “That was gorgeous.”

Victor opens his eyes again, and takes Yuuri in. “Yeah?”

Yuuri’s still looking at him with that uncanny confidence. The same confidence that he exudes when he skates, these days; it’s started to creep into their private life more and more. Victor likes it. He likes it so, so much.

“Yeah,” Yuuri says. “Here, give me your shirt. I’ll throw it in the laundry and get you a towel.”

So Victor pulls his shirt off and hands it to Yuuri—who puts it to his nose and inhales, which, oh, _god._ And then Yuuri steps around Victor and heads for the bathroom, like nothing unusual has happened at all.

For a moment, all Victor can do is sit there, dazed and half naked and slightly lost. He doesn’t think he’s ever masturbated while kneeling before. Has he? He hopes he hasn’t, anyway; he hopes that this can be something he does only for Yuuri.

Slowly, he begins to get up. His knees protest, which… yeah, he probably should have seen that coming. He’s been on this carpet for a _while._ It’s fine, though. A little painful, but nothing he can’t stretch out. And, besides: completely worth it.

He starts to pull his pants up, but then remembers about the wetness. Screw it. Yuuri’s naked; why shouldn’t Victor be the same? He kicks everything off and does a few quick leg stretches.

Yuuri pauses in the bathroom doorway, towel in hand. “Are your legs okay?” he asks.

“All the kneeling,” Victor says, bending one knee and stretching it out again.

“Oh!” Yuuri says, rushing back to him. “You should’ve said—”

“It’s fine,” Victor assures him. “I promise it’s fine.”

Yuuri searches his face, still clearly worried, but apparently finds nothing there that contradicts Victor’s words. So, with a little nod of satisfaction, he drops it and returns to his original mission. The hand towel is wet when Yuuri presses it to Victor’s belly, and Victor inhales at the coolness of it. But it feels nice, and he tells Yuuri so, and Yuuri wipes him down, gently, until all of the mess is gone.

“I like watching you,” Yuuri says, passing the towel one last time over Victor’s cock, making him shiver.

“As much as you like it when _I_ watch _you?”_ Victor teases. Well, half-teases. Part of him is genuinely curious, since this is a new thing for them.

Yuuri pauses for a moment, considering. Then he gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Hard to say. I’m not just talking about this, though,” he says, brushing Victor’s cock again, this time with two cool fingers. “I meant the nail polish, too.”

“You like anything that involves me on my knees, huh?” He’s half-teasing again. It would be far less than half, except that he already knows the answer.

Even so, warmth floods him when Yuuri replies, “I really, really do.”

“Good,” Victor says, pulling Yuuri close, watching as his eyes widen. “I like us that way, too.”

Their bodies are inches apart, and it takes nothing at all for them to come together again, the skin of their bellies pressed together. They are chest to chest, thigh to thigh, cock to cock. Toe to toe. Victor feels Yuuri stir against him: that damn stamina of his.

“I think you won the pedicure competition, though,” Yuuri says. His voice is barely above a whisper.

“I didn’t,” Victor admits. “The brush slipped a few times. You’ll have to scrape blue off your cuticles.”

“But—”

“Nope,” Victor says. “I made mistakes. You didn’t. I was watching. And you have to take points off for mistakes.”

“Or else it isn’t fair,” Yuuri adds, and then gives a little laugh. “Guess I win, then.”

“Guess you do,” Victor says happily. Yuuri should win everything that can be won, from now until the end of time. Victor feels very strongly about this.

A hint of a frown creases Yuuri’s forehead. “Your way, though, it’s…”

“Needlessly complicated?” Victor guesses. “Way too time-consuming?”

“I was going to say soothing.” Yuuri moves his hips a little. Not like he’s trying to start something; just like he’s adjusting his stance. It still sends a shiver through Victor’s entire body.

“Soothing,” he repeats.

Yuuri nods. “And… something else. Watching you do that, it was like…” He shrugs, his cheeks going pink again.

_Guess I got lazy,_ Victor thinks.

“I used to do that all the time when I was younger,” he says. “Only for myself, though. Never for anyone else.”

“And then you stopped.” One of Yuuri’s hands has found its way into Victor’s hair again; his voice is soft and intimate, little more than a whisper. Every syllable is wrapped in sympathy. “Maybe you could teach me? I could do your nails that way, next time. And you could keep doing mine, if you wanted.”

“Yes,” Victor tries to say, but it gets caught in his throat. So instead, he wraps Yuuri up in his arms, infusing _yes yes yes_ into every single place where his skin touches Yuuri’s.

For a few more minutes, they stay just like that: wrapped in each other’s arms, the coolness of the room teasing their backs as warmth pools between them. It’s Yuuri who eventually pulls away.

“Boxes,” he says, adjusting his glasses with a wry smile. “We have more boxes to go through.”

Victor can’t reasonably argue with that. And so they pull their clothes back on, and they go back out into the hallway, and they get back to work.

And then, very softly, Yuuri says, “Ooh.”

Victor smiles. Fourteen minutes, this time.

“What is it?” he asks.


End file.
